MegaMan Network Transmission Music - in_cube plug-in and lossless encoding (FLAC) by CyberSpark at 3:25 AM EDT on April 30, 2008
Hi I'm new here. VideoGameScrapBook informed me about this site. Thanks. :)
OK so I've read through the list of games that support the in_cube plug-in and was happy to see that it should work for MegaMan Network Transmission. :D Now please note that I'm very new to all of this, I've never used Winamp (VLC media player user) and just recently heard about the in_cube plug-in.
What I would like to do is extract all of the music from MegaMan Network Transmission (Gamecube disc), burn it to CD(s) first and then encode it in lossless for archival purposes. Can someone walk a noob through the steps of how to do this? I can handle the lossless encoding part myself. Better yet, if someone has already done this (in lossless FLAC or APE) could you send me the files?
I also want to be able to loop some of the songs to match that of the inferior mp3 quality game recodings. Most "game-rips" (recodings) that I've seen have 32 songs with 91 minutes worth of music. An 800MB CD should hold 91 minutes, right? Anyway, I'd really appreciate help on this. Thanks for reading. :)
Well, there's 4 methods to get the DSPs. These are probably in backwords order of easiest... (Therefore #4 is easiest, #3 is second easiest, etc.)
1) Create a copy of the GC ISO yourself. This requires a specific DVD drive for your PC. I don't know what drive is needed (You'd have to search for it). Even if I did know, I mildly doubt you have the right one. Even if you did have the right one, you'd need to modify the firmware (or download a modified firmware and install it to your DVD drive). I don't know how to do this, or where to get the modified firmware (you'd have to search). Once you did that, you'd have to get the correct software to dump the disc, and then you'd have to get the right software to read the resulting RAW image (see #3).
2) Create a copy of the GC ISO yourself, using the NGC and the broadband adapter. This is among the "easiest" "legal" ways, but probably expensive. If you happen to have the BBA, then you need to get the game that has the glitch in it that allows you to login to a server running on your PC, rather than the server it's programmed to connect to (the back door you'd be using was fixed in a later version of this game, so you need the original, not the "+" or "Plus" version). To run the server on your PC, you need specific software. I have this software, but I don't remember where on my PC it is, or what it's called (again, search for it). Once you have the necessary software and hardware, this method is pretty easy, but very slow. There's readme's with the software. It's all explained reasonably well with those.
3) Download the GC ISO off of some site that has it, or a torrent for it. Once you have the ISO/GCM, you can read the GCM with GC Explorer. This will also allow you to extract the contents of the GCM file.
4) Download the DSPs themselves, and don't bother with all the fangled stuff above. You can find them here.
Once you have the DSPs, you need to be informed that the MegaMan Network Transmission DSP files do not follow the Nintendo guidelines for DSP files. As such, they don't work correctly with in_cube. They *do* play, but I've heard that they don't loop properly. I doubt that VGMstream will be much better, but I'd still recommend VGMstream over in_cube for these, as it is likely more capable of getting data that in_cube can't get. In other words, you will likely have to use VGMstream to create WAV files, and then use these WAV files to manually loop them. How to use VGMstream is explained in the readme that comes with it.
Hopefully I've provided enough information to help you accomplish your goal. If not, please specify what you need clarification on, and I will see what I can do. Please note that at the time that I posted this, VGMstream was unaccessible. I'm sure the link is correct, but it seems that sourceforge wouldn't respond. Mouser X over and out.
Thanks for the info, I'll definitely look into it when I get home.
Once I extract the WAV files what program can I use to loop the audio? What will give me the most accurate results? I want it to sound seemless as if there's no break in the audio.
That's going to require a fair amount of work on your part to figure out exactly where the loop point is. Any decent wave editor (I use Audacity, many apparently use "Goldwave") will let you look at the waveform and determine this, and then copy the looped portion and apply a fade. I've been meaning to write something to make this suck less... Particularly for things like this where we know they loop precisely, and an algorithmic solution shouldn't be terribly difficult.
I'd do it with deltas. Build up a list of all pairs of consecutive deltas, and use that as a start point to speed up the search. Assume that there is a sequence near the end that is repeated earlier, find longest (or first few longest). Maybe some fuzz (which the delta pretty much is).
I'm finally home; may I please get some assistance now? I've download Winamp, I've downloaded the VGMstream folder (with in_vgmstream.dll file), what do I do with all of this now? to what directory do I move the vgmstream.dll file and how do I use it within Winamp? Sorry but I'm a noob. :(
OK thanks, now what. lol. Can I drag and drop the files? I'm trying to convert them to .WAV format.
Edit: OK I should really look for things first before asking questions.
This might sound a little strange but do you think I can use FL Studio 7 (Music creation program) to loop the .WAV files? With it I should be able to import the .WAV file and the program already has features in it for creating loop points. Think it might work?